


she who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.

by officialgeorgeglass



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Sansa-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 02:39:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7600264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/officialgeorgeglass/pseuds/officialgeorgeglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this world, she had left home hungering for more, mouth filled with mint, dreams filled with success. She had returned with ash thick and hot and choking on her tongue, her dreams lifeless or nightmares, depending on the night.</p><p>Slowly, the ashes fell away from her tongue. Slowly, slowly, rosewater became the only flavour she cared for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose.

**pre.**

In this world, she’s a lawyer. It has taken her years (just shy of decade _s_ ) to reach this point. In this world her mother lives. Her father still does not; Robb still does not. This world was still too hungry and shrewd for them. She knows she is a corruption to her surname, because she knows she has in spades the intelligence and manipulation they lacked.

They would not look on her with warmth, if they still had hearts to beat in their chests.

Winterfell will be hers before it is Arya’s or Bran’s or Rickon’s, but she remembers little of its corridors with their burning-wood smell, or its old leather waiting room sofas other than disparate flashes of clarity. That thought burns in the back of her throat alongside the knowledge that it had never been enough to satisfy her, that being good was never what she wanted.

(It burns and she makes the flames lick higher with two fingers of whiskey in one gulp. Ambition is guilty. The wolf logo on letters and emails from her mother reminds her to be good _enough_. So it goes.)

* * *

 

**one.**

In this world, she had left home hungering for more, mouth filled with mint, dreams filled with success. She had returned with ash thick and hot and choking on her tongue, her dreams lifeless or nightmares, depending on the night. The Lannisters were kings of corporate law driven by the power-drunk ruthlessness of their hidden Queen Bee, and they had cut her open, bared her heart, bathed her in molten gold. She hated them, she was half in love with them, she wanted to destroy them, she wanted to be one of them. She could not look Eddard in the eyes for her shame. A plane crash took him only a week later. He was on his way to treat with golden-son Jaime. The Lannisters wanted to settle on some breach of ethics Ned could not forgive them for. He wanted court, he wanted justice.

(Catelyn still pretends it wasn’t seeing her oily skin and brittle hair that had made him switch his flight in a fit of rage. Another finger of whiskey for that particular fire. So it goes.)

* * *

**two.**

In this world, she stayed with Robb and his _legal partner_ Margaery Tyrell while new players snapped hungrily at her heels. Robb worked, Margaery schmoozed. Margaery schmoozed considerably less than Robb worked, and spent the rest of her time fending away the snakes that circled Sansa. It had been a long time since her childhood, since she’d had female company that wasn’t Arya or wasn’t trying to tear her apart. She’d allowed herself to be happy. It had been summer, after all, filled with sangrias instead of hard liquor, and Margaery had smelled of flowers.

Slowly, the ashes fell away from her tongue. Slowly, slowly, rosewater became the only flavour she cared for. Margaery was curling smirks and carefree, cutting jibes at everyone’s expense but Sansa. Margaery was afire with ambition, but she never burned out. She was the world Sansa had dreamed of without its consequences, she was power without the bitter aftertaste. Margaery Tyrell was idyllic. Margaery Tyrell was a daydream brought to life, a conundrum of impossible possibilities, despicable, unscrupulous, caring, Margaery Tyrell did not touch her as though she was broken. Margaery kissed her as though she was the power they both thirsted for.

Sansa Stark fell in love; Robb Stark got engaged. So it goes, in families built on old money and education, on business and legal practice. She can still recall the half-sad smile on his face as they decided, all three of them together over Chinese takeout. Egg rolls and moo shu pork. Sansa remembers, remembers because her heart didn’t quite break so much as retreat, remembers because for a feeling of nothingness, she couldn’t bear how much it hurt. Can’t bear? It’s a little murky, now.

(This one’s less of a burn, more of an ache. Hollow. Sickening. Vodka’s cheaper, faster than whiskey. Whiskey for ghosts, vodka for heartbreak. One shot, two shot, three shot, four. _So it goes_.)

* * *

**three.**

In this world she left Winterfell again disillusioned and hungrier than ever. Perhaps it had been inevitable that she would end up opening a practice with Tyrion Lannister, the disgraced lion, her only sort-of-almost friend during her darkest years. Perhaps it was the Universe’s idea of an ironic twist. Perhaps it was a statement, a rebellion of sorts for the both of them. Perhaps she knew, in some ridiculous, precognitive way, what was going to happen. What was certain was that they were both starved for prestige, for autonomy, for _authority_. Better Tyrion Lannister than Petyr Baelish, who her mother had always taken precaution to keep her away from.

There’s common cause, between she and Tyrion, and common pains. Common, too, is the sacrifice of what they want for the darker burning desire for revenge. Or perhaps that is all that is common. He, forsaken for the way he was born; she, forsaken for the pathway she chose.

She grew to like him, in those early days. She’s never loved him, she doesn’t think. But she does still like him and his calm intelligence. He was and is reclusive. He cared, and cares, in his roundabout fashion. He never went to his father’s funeral, but Sansa remembers sitting and drinking, Tyrion recounting happy memories that weren’t really happy in a dead-sounding voice. He mightn’t be good - might never have been - but Tyrion Lannister isn’t, and was never evil, either. Sansa thinks maybe she’s the same. Maybe that’s why they work.

He didn’t question when she disappeared from work for three days after Robb died. He only turned up at her apartment, let himself in, and cooked her dinner. He didn’t try to console her. They were both too intelligent for that. Sansa made it through the meal without crying. The shower he encouraged her into wasn’t so successful. She emerged, eventually, among billowing steam, her skin pink and stinging from heat. He’d left a plane ticket on her coffee table alongside a glass of water. He knew better than to offer to accompany her. She’d sighed in relief, and gulped the drink down in one.

(Whiskey would have to wait until she returned from the funeral. Half a bottle, possibly more, shared with Tyrion, along with her memories. Mourning. So it goes.)

* * *

**four.**

In this world, Jon’s her cousin and his girlfriend has hair even redder than her own. When they met at the airport she was wild and blunt and refreshing at a time so somber. _Ygritte_ , she said her name was. _From even further north than you buggers_. Arya, Sansa thought, was half in love with the woman already. She felt Jon’s tears on her cheek. His eyes never ringed pink, though, and he didn’t make a sound other than a thick, gruff speech. His brother by choice, and all that. Sansa felt numb throughout.

Arya was as small as ever, hard and lean. She hugged Sansa and they both wondered if maybe that was the first time they had. Sansa had tasted something terrible between her teeth at that thought. She should have loved her sister more deeply. She should have been better for all of them. Arya’s some sort of superpower: Sansa’s methods with their father’s morals and memory. _Robb’s_ morals and memory. She still can’t work out exactly what it is her younger sister does, but it sounded like balancing tightrope on the edge of legality in order to expose breaches of ethics. _Leave it to you_ , she’d said, _to do something illegal and dangerous for all the right reasons_ . _To stick up for the little man._ It was the closest to an apology she could come to. Arya had understood.

Bran and Rickon could have been strangers, for all she’d seen of them. She’d missed the years that made them. Bran was some sort of genius, the only one who’d left the law behind, dabbling in computer engineering, he’d claimed. Some sort of network. Like the trees. Rickon… Even Rickon hadn’t known what Rickon was doing. He’d looked happy enough, though, so Sansa left it.

Catelyn was heartbroken and heartbreaking, almost enough to draw tears from Sansa’s exhausted eyes. She can’t remember much other than the harrowing look on her face, the strength of her embrace. Losing a child must be the world’s greatest cruelty.

She hadn’t realized, until then, just how much the eldest was supposed to know. How much help they were supposed to be. Her ribs ached with the absence of her father and her brother, who’d been much the same. The rest of her ached when she’d given her speech, her voice never cracking, tears never falling. She spoke for all of them, Arya, Bran, Rickon, even Jon. She can still remember dry heaving in a toilet cubicle afterwards, wishing Tyrion’s pasta would reappear. It had refused. She can remember being pulled away, upwards, and sat down instead. Her hands had been moved until they were behind her head. She’d had no choice but to breathe, and glare at the concern of her dead brother’s fiancee. Ex-fiancee. What was the term, once he was dead?

 _Sansa_ , she’d whispered through her own tears. _You look like you’re dying_. Her tears matched the ones Sansa had cried so endlessly in the days prior. She hiccuped, and her glare softened. Tears for a brother; concern for… Well, whatever it was they had been. She’d whispered her name right back, and slumped, collapsing into Margaery’s arms. The numbness had seeped into her mind, after that. Or maybe there was just nothing else worth remembering. Not until somehow she’d made it back into Robb’s place. Margaery’s place. Her old place. She remembers a desperate sort of remembering. She can still feel the echoing shatter of her heart when Margaery had twined their legs together and told her that she’d hate her, because Margaery was never wrong. She can remember the first thing she felt on the day of her brother’s funeral, wrapped in the embrace of his still breathing fiancee. The way she loves has always been despicable. She can remember slipping out of bed while they both pretended to sleep. She can remember the ice-cold discomfit of the airport waiting chairs digging into her tailbone for five hours longer than necessary, because she was too cowardly to face waking up next to the only person she’d ever been in love with. Past tense? Maybe not. She returned to her apartment in a tin can hurtling through the atmosphere and a state of unbelonging.

(That time too was vodka. Too many of the little bottles of it they serve on planes. It had eased her out of Winterfell and back to inbetween, back to loneliness, out of Margaery and into the shroud of everything else. She could almost forget the crack of her lover’s voice. _You’re going to hate me_. So it goes, so it goes, so it goes.)

* * *

**five.**

A month later, the whispers had informed them that Margaery Tyrell had joined the ranks of the Lannister empire. Tyrion had supplied the whiskey. Tyrion had taught Sansa what it is to love and to hate all at once. Sansa had gotten drunk and decided it was time to burn Tyrion’s family to the ground.

(This was not victory, this was not regret. It did not merit whiskey. It did not demand vodka.)

So it goes:

* * *

**six.**

Six months later than that, Sansa Stark sits in her office at the corner of the top floor of their building and remembers all of this. There’s a monstrous looking file sitting on her desk. She’s not sure if it’s truly that big or if it only looks that big, because it contains so many of her darkest hungers. Tyrion has a copy facing him, too, in the office beside her. She does not doubt that the post its sticking out of his do not shine emptily. His copy, only an hour after they’d both arrived to the office, is probably half as tall and twice as effective. He’s always been better at the more personal cases. If this can even be considered a case. She’s never attacked another company like this. She thinks maybe she should check their employee list, or their cyber safety. Something, anything to do. Anything to feel useful. Arya had left two days earlier with a kiss on the cheek and a promise to aid in her vendetta in any way she could. Sansa wishes she were still here, so she’d have to pretend not to feel so much anxiety. She’d given the papers to the interns to process the day before that.

By the time Arya even started packing, someone would have leaked something.

It could only possibly take a day for a practice as large as the Lannisters’ to figure out that this was a real threat. Cersei, for all her flaws, is not stupid. Nor is she at all bad at crisis management (or rather, her crisis manager is not bad at crisis management). It is a six hour flight from where Casterly Rock scowls over the skyline to where Sansa’s office hovers in the middle. Whoever they’ve sent to play middleman has to arrive soon, or there has been an underestimation. The stack of papers seems to grow until its binder threatens to break.

 

“You can’t be serious.” Sansa would know that voice anywhere. She hopes she doesn’t look as pale as she thinks she should. Her stomach churns with something she cannot and will not think about. Heels clack hurriedly into the doorway, and the panicked voice of her secretary cuts through her panic.

“Miss Stark, I’m so sorry, she just- I didn’t even think, does she have an appointment?”

“Jeyne, calm. It’s fine. I’ve been expecting Miss Tyrell here for some time.”

“Oh.” The younger woman’s surprise seems to fill the room. “Okay, I’ll… I’ll reschedule your 11:00.”

“Thank you, Jeyne.” Sansa turns to her visitor as the door clicks closed. She pulls her file behind the screen of her desktop, and raises her eyebrows. Margaery purses her lips and reaches a hand into her bag. An identical mountain of paper is dumped onto the now empty space. Margaery places one hand either side of the file and leans downwards. Sansa stares at the cherry red of her lips and pretends to look disinterested.

“You _can’t_ be serious.” She repeats. They’ve always existed too close for comfort, but this is something far more dangerous.

“I wouldn’t compile something like that as a joke.” Sansa replies, her voice nowhere near as dry as she feels. Something in the air crackles.

There’s laughter, and Sansa is infuriated to realise that it is not her own. “You can’t go public with this.”

“Looks like I already have, given you have the entire thing. I mean, I know you’re good, but Arya’s better. Which one did you melt?” It’s too far. The entire thing is too far, she knows that, she’s always known, she can’t remember why in God’s name she ever thought this was a good idea. To watch Margaery show the slightest bit of shock, though, it’s satisfying. _You told me I’d hate you, she itches to scream. You told me, and you’re never wrong. Is it so hard to think that maybe I can have that and the other at once? Is it too far to reach towards the idea that I cannot happily ignore the fact that we could have been, that this was safe, that there was a world of opportunity for you and you still picked the worst one possible?_ Sansa swallows back the torrent and allows the thoughts to bleed into the way she stares.

 _I hate you_ , she wishes she had the courage to say. _I love you_. Margaery doesn’t move. Sansa’s hand snakes to her telephone. She presses intercom and never breaks her gaze when she speaks towards the box. “Jeyne, fire the Frey. We cannot have his weakness at a time like this. Inform him it is on grounds of corporate espionage.” She clicks off, and swallows again.

 

“You ca-”

 

“You work for them.” It’s the first hint of broken Sansa has allowed herself to show anyone but Tyrion since Robb died. It is not like the funeral, because this time she _wants_ Margaery to hear it, to feel it. She wants her to feel her blood like acid inside of her veins. She wants her to remember the broken little bird Sansa had been but could never be again, and to hurt for the steel she’s had to meld into herself, to hurt for the creaking rust of the iron cage around her heart. If Margaery feels any of this, Sansa knows she’ll never show it. She’s angry enough to try anyways, though. “After everything. After what they’ve done to me, to everyone around them. After my father. After Robb. After… I don’t know what it was, but after all of that, after you’re given the one chance you might have ever had to forge yourself a new world, you work for them? You clean up their messes?”

“It’s a good job, Sansa.” Margaery replies, finally biting, finally off script. She’d been the Lannisters’ only chance, but it just so happened that Sansa was still the only choice she’d ever been able to make for herself.

“No it isn’t.”

“I’m doing what I love.” It’s a lie, they both know it, and a feeble one. Margaery white-knuckles the oak of her desk. Sansa rises from her seat and stands taller than her opposition. “I’m doing what I’m good at. They’ll never be able to replace me. I’m challenged, I have freedom. I don’t know what else you expect me to want from my job.”

“Happiness. Satisfaction. You’re meant for bigger things than crisis management, Margaery.”

“Tell me, Sansa. Are you happy? Are you satisfied? Am I meant for bigger things, or am I meant for you?” Sansa’s never been on this side of the woman before. She’s never faced her storm, her relentlessness. “This is business.” She finishes, because it isn’t. Sansa’s never felt sicker. She’s never been more determined to win. She splays her hand on the desk, just near enough to Margaery’s to be uncomfortable, and swings her body around the side of it in two smooth steps.

“You are not a child. Do not embarrass me by acting like one. Your employers are deplorable in every way. You and I have only ever been so in one or two at once, sometimes none. Our methods are not kind but they are not always cruel either. Our motivations prioritise ourselves, but they are not at the expense of all those around us. We seek to destroy others, yes. That is never fair. That is never good. But we do not destroy them because they exist. We do so because they are in the way of our growth, or because they are the culmination of something rotten and corrupted.” Sansa’s voice chills even herself. It was rather like her eulogy for Robb. Were she in any other world, perhaps it might be terrifying. But in this world, it is an asset. “In this case, it just so happens that I am going to tear Cersei Lannister, her brother, and her bastard of a son to shreds because they are both in my way and because they are the festering epitome of oppression and modern evil.”

“You’re being an idiot, Sansa. It would take the press of a goddamn button to blow your tiny little practice off of the face of the earth for them. You think this file will save you? They have something ten times bigger on you and your partner-”

“You can’t even say his name, can you?”

“Sansa.”

“Margaery.”

“You can’t go public with this.” Margaery stepped towards her in her urgency, thumb brushing against wrist. “It’s suicide.”

“The whispers are already out there. That’s half your fault.” There’s half a sneer in her voice and on her face as she lifts her chin, eyes angling down towards the formidability of Margaery Tyrell playing her game. “I can’t just not do it now. I won’t look weak for their benefit. I can’t look weak for your benefit.” She’s never felt like this, like they’re equals. Not professionally, at least. As she thinks it, though, something dark oozes through her mind. Are they equals in this? Have they ever been, in anything? It’s closer to a year than not since she last even saw this woman. Maybe that’s what they’re fated to be. Equal. Parallel. Never touching, always alongside, too far away to touch, too close to be forgotten. This time it doesn’t just burn in her throat. It scalds across every inch of her skin and consumes her. “I can’t.” Sansa hates the way her voice sounds like begging.

Margaery has never obliged her weakness. “It’s pretty goddamn simple not to.” She looks down at the offending document and scoffs. “It’s barely legible, anyways. You’re really going to embarrass yourself like this?”

“I have a good editor.”

“You’re smarter than this.” Sansa blinks at that, and her mouth curves cruelly.

“Don’t act like you give a shit. Did you ever care? Or was I just some fancy, some _thing_ to pass the time on until life got in the way?” Margaery seems to stumble backwards a little. Sansa lets something chaotic overtake her. “Why’d you go to work for them? Was it the money? The power?” She grins. “I bet you realised _real_ fast how stupid that idea was. Tell me, is Joffrey still the second coming of Lucifer? You want power there, Margaery, you’ll have to pry it out of Cersei Lannister’s cold, dead hands. And you know what she’ll do before you can get anywhere near? She’ll burn it all to the ground so that no one else can touch it. Tell me I’m wrong.”

 

Margaery didn’t.

 

“So you knew, then. You knew all of that. And you still did it. You knew I’d hate you. You said so. And still…”

“It was business.” Feeble defense. Sansa glares.

“Where does business end and life start, then? I’d _love_ to know.”

“ _Sansa_.” It’s not Margaery’s voice - doesn’t even belong to a woman, and that alone jolts Sansa out of her rampage. She wishes she cared more that Margaery is pressing into her space even still, so much that she has to stand straighter to peer over her shoulder at Tyrion Lannister in the doorway. He holds up a folder and waves it.

“Is that the Lannister case?” She asks, unable to keep from being shocked. It’s nowhere near the mountain hiding behind her computer. He nods. Sansa expects the woman in front of her to turn, play pleasantry, make light of the fact that her interest must go towards the papers and not the people. Margaery continues to stare at her, though, and doesn’t move. She prays for some saving grace, and her eyes dart from the woman to Tyrion who grins with a level of mirth that Sansa _resents_.

“Margaery Tyrell.” He says the name like he cannot believe it and sweeps into the room, filling it with learned charisma and a contorted sort of warmth. Margaery offers Sansa one last glance before turning. Sansa, for her part, can picture so clearly the smirk that plasters itself over her face as she turns, lofty and careless as the wind, and titters with laughter light as a summer breeze. She can breathe again without the stifling closeness. The emptiness in front of her gapes, grates against her, fishhooks in her skin dragging her away from her desk.

 

(Too early for a drink.)

 

Tyrion kisses Margaery’s hand and jests about his height as though the air isn’t cascading out of the ajar door for its thickness. “How long has it been since I saw you last? Five years?”

“Six,” Margaery had always somehow enraptured her audiences with her signature brand of cutting coolness and warm familiarity. “Your father tried to worm his way into my grandmother’s seat.”

“Ah, of course.” Tyrion chuckles, and adds, dryly, “God rest his soul.” Margaery laughs. “She is a brilliant woman. Generally quite brilliant, in truth. I do not think I have known someone so intelligent in all my life.”

“I am certain she would blush to hear you say so.”

“Do not pass it on. He who dares not grasp the thorn, and such.” Tyrion smiles again, before turning back to Sansa as she takes the heavily edited papers from him.

“Thank you, Tyrion.” She murmurs, and it is not for the work. He smiles blandly, before his gaze flits back to her guest. _Sort of_.

“I can cover your twelve-thirty, it’s a company case. I’ll have Jeyne send me the rest of your schedule for the day and re-work it. I’ll take over what I can. Miss Poole can handle the rest.” Sansa pauses in her shuffling through the new pages, and frowns over the work at him. Margaery is forgotten in the corner, until Tyrion cocks a brow and it dawns on her. Their closeness when he’d arrived. The blaze in her eyes. Margaery’s intensity.

She rolls her eyes.

She cannot allow herself to be embarrassed by Tyrion Lannister.

 

“I doubt that will be necessary. You’ll hear from me when I’m on my way to join you.” Sansa returns to her reading, ignoring the ticking amusement she can feel rolling off of both the other bodies in her office. She’s of half a mind to throw them both out.

“I’ll pick you up something to eat, too.” Tyrion’s words do not have to be insinuations in order to insinuate, and Sansa’s jaw works.

“Just a coffee, thanks. Cappuccino-”

“Half a sugar. I know the order, Sansa.” He sighs. “Did you eat breakfast?”

“I had coffee.”

“Sans-”

“That’s all, then, Tyrion?” He glowers at her dismissal. _Out_ , she mouths, and he shakes his head as he tugs the door shut. The air thickens again.

“He’s right, you know.” Sansa ignores her and returns to her seat. She picks up the edited file and squints at the terribly scribbled annotations in the borders. None of it sticks. “So, Tyrion Lannister. Business?” Sansa flicks her eyes upwards, then back down. She looks at the pale, unmarred skin on the ring finger of her left hand. She’s considered it, of course. In this world, she’d have been stupid not to. But there were too many reasons not to marry Tyrion. She pretends she prefers the look of no jewelry on her hands, because honesty would hurt too much. She looks at Margaery’s hands, devoid now of Robb’s engagement ring. She truly is appalling. “He’s your master editor?” She drops the papers.

“What do you want, Margaery?”

“To stop you making the worst possible career decision imaginable.” She’s slinking closer again, every inch a betrayal of her words.

Sansa sighs, and pushes her hand through her hair. “That’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t quite fol-”

“I don’t want you to tell me why they sent you here. I know why they sent you here.” She swallows. There’s history in the air between them now, memories on Sansa’s tongue and ghosts in her veins and fear in her fingertips, her ribs, sealing her throat tight. And Margaery. _Margaery_. Margaery everywhere, the spaces in between everything, Margaery in the spaces between her teeth, under her fingernails, hovering in her darkest corners, in all the cracks of her being. It’s pathetic. It washes against her, again, again, again, crumbling away all the strength she’d thought she had. She erodes down to a wisp. In attempt to reclaim the land of herself, she starts to rise from her seat. “I need you to tell me what you want.”

Margaery crosses into the no man’s land and urges onwards, hesitating at the Sansa’s borders. It’s volatile, dangerous. “Power.” She replies. “Everything. Everywhere. The world. Every other world. And then some. _More_ .” It’s always been more. She sucks in a breath. Sansa doesn’t think a Tyrell has ever looked this weak. Margaery crosses enemy lines. “All of that.” Sansa swallows. “You. Since - _God_ , since you were there, and they’d stolen so much from you, and still… You didn’t want to be fixed. You didn’t let Robb fix you. You didn’t let me try. You did it all yourself. And I _wanted_ you. I want you.”

Sansa wonders whether breathing has always been like this. Fragile on the way out, a stinging clarity on the way in. Like the frigid air of Winterfell in January, sharp against stagnant, overheated fireplace fumes, every lungful sparks with a frozen sort of electricity, alive. There’s so little of it, she thinks, less and less with every passing instant.

 

Margaery kisses her.

 

Margaery kisses her and Sansa forgets what she was going to say.

(Was she even going to say anything? She can’t remember that, either.)

 

She remembers reading somewhere about drowning, about how your body refuses to breathe in any water, how it won’t let you give up. It’s the most painful thing in the world, apparently. Lungs burn, beg, suffer; head aches, compresses, _explodes_. They say, though, it is only hurts until the moment your body fails you. When you finally do breathe in the water, finally damn yourself, the moment you are given over to Death himself; that moment is peaceful. That moment is painless. The water owns you, and it gives you peace.

 

Sansa has always been terrified of losing control.

 

Margaery kisses her, and it’s a delicate thing. Her lips are softer than Sansa remembers, but maybe it’s just because they never were soft together. She smells of something flowery - not roses, despite the logo on her papers and her pencils and the badge she still wears (dully, Sansa wonders how she gets away with that under Cersei Lannister’s watch,) - something lighter, something citrusy. It suits Margaery. Sansa decides she likes it so much it distracts her from the way Margaery’s lips tremble against her own. There’s no force, but still she stumbles backwards, lost, hand clutching desperately to the other woman’s shirt as her knees crumble against her desk. She leans backwards, glad for the excuse to take her weight off of her feet. Margaery looks at her like she has some great secret in her eyes. It’s terrible. She feels herself slipping, can’t do anything to stop it. She doesn’t _want_ to stop it. Margaery’s hands settle either side of her hips. Some part of her knows she still has the woman’s shirt bundled in her fist.

Voluntary apnea: that’s what they call the breath-holding when you drown. Not breathing by choice. It seems stupid. Of course there isn’t a choice. Doesn’t everyone want to survive? Is it voluntary when the other option is death? She wonders if Margaery is her drowning. Everything before, holding her breath. Everything after, the coldness of death. Margaery: the clarity, the peace. She tugs on the shirt and sucks the water further into her lungs.

Margaery kisses her, and she tastes of home. Not Winterfell though, not exactly. Like the snap of frost, the oakiness of red wine, and the smokiness of fire. She tastes of everything Sansa’s ever craved: power, freedom, fresh air, acceptance. Margaery’s hair is silk under her fingertips, and she twines her hand into the slight curls as she feels teeth brushing her lip. She pulls back again, just enough to speak. Margaery’s lips fall to her jaw, and she shivers as though the room were a freezer.

“Quit.” She whispers. “Come work for me. For us.” She begs. Margaery chuckles.

“They’ll call it collusion.” Sansa feels it murmured against her skin and can’t bring herself to care. _Slipping_ , she thinks. _Uncontrollable. Lost_. She lets out a sigh, lips on her neck now, insistent.

“There’s no proof.”

“They’ll magic up some proof. You may be taking away their credibility, but you can’t take away their talent for making things stick.” Sansa can feel a non-existent breeze where Margaery has abandoned her skin, prickling angrily.

 

“I’m going to turn them into nothing. No one else will dare come for me. Besides, why would they? You call your brother tonight, and suggest he merges with Renly’s half of the Baratheon business.” She taps her finger against Margaery’s wrist. “Stannis doesn’t care for politics and games, only the law.” She taps again. “The Tullys will never turn against me.” Drags her finger in a circle over her lover’s skin. “All I have to do is whisper in Jon’s ear and he’ll convince his aunt that Sunspear need their money in return for restoring their glory.” Sansa leans forwards, nudges their noses together. “The Lannisters will rule over only ashes. Then… I could go home, if I wanted.” A ghost seems to run through Margaery. The same one haunts the back of Sansa’s own heart, its shadow joined only by its father. They darken her edges. “Or stay here.” She kisses Margaery, long and desperate. “You’ll go down with them. And I can’t watch you walk out that door knowing it’s back to that.” Her hands come free. One drags through the copper of her hair, the memory of Margaery’s touch uncomfortable against her fingertips. “You can do whatever you want, if you leave them. You can be who you want to be.”

 

“Sansa,” She whispers, the word dangerous. Sansa breathes in. No one speaks. There’s something heavy and thick on Sansa’s tongue, on her shoulders. Margaery drags her lips against her collarbone, wistful. “I’ve told you what I want.”

“Are you going to take what you want, or run away?”

“ _You_ ran the last two times. Why not now?”

“I realised something.” She hovers near Margaery’s lips, running the woman’s crumpled shirt through her fingers. “There’s no point swimming against a riptide. You just have to let it suck you in. And if you drown, you drown.” Margaery blinks. Sansa’s fingers become insistent, sneaking practised under her shirt, nails scratching against the familiar and foreign skin, learning, relearning, pressing, dragging. Margaery sighs into Sansa’s mouth. Sansa wonders whether she’s devoured as much of this woman as Margaery has of her, only to press it back in with every other kiss. Her lips are insistent this time, hands scrabbling at Sansa’s waist until her own shirt comes untucked, her soul further exposed with every inch Margaery’s fingers cover. She collapses against the desk behind her. She prays for stability, and Margaery nudges her further back until she’s sitting almost on her keyboard, the Lannister file hanging dangerously over the edge. Sansa closes her eyes. Sansa melts. She’s vaguely aware of skin under her touch and touch on her skin, of teeth biting down on her lip and tugging. She hears herself moan from a world away. Margaery’s lips are swollen, her lipstick non-existent as she returns her attention to Sansa’s neck.

 

“We’re in my office.” She sputters, her words punctuated by a gasp. Her hands grip tighter into Margaery’s hair. There’s no sound, only the meticulous descent down to Sansa’s collar. It will be speckled with reds and purples already, she can tell, and the knowledge twists something in her gut she’d thought to be long dead. “Marg-”

“Thank God you don’t have those bloody pretentious glass walls, then.”

There’s a silence, and then they’re laughing. Sansa’s not sure who started first, only that Margaery’s face lights up and then hides, her forehead pressing into her purpling masterpiece, body rumbling silently. Sansa throws her head back and feels a warmth flooding through her, a lightness she hasn’t known for years. The past suddenly seems an old canvas, the laughter a turpentine rag. They’re not clean yet. Maybe they never will be. But the chipping paint starts to fall away with every desperate breath and ache in the muscles of Sansa’s cheeks, and she thinks there’s room there: sunlight, too, and water. They can grow back together all the parts they tore to shreds. Margaery’s giggles fade into nothing, and they watch each other for a moment that has no start and no end. It’s as infinite as it is finite, as dragging as it is fleeting.

“I wrote a letter,” Margaery whispers. She coughs. “My resignation. I wrote it a week after I started. I found a photo of you and Joff. I still have it. The letter, that is.” She steps backwards, and smoothes her shirt. Sansa accepts defeat, her walls already rebuilding themselves. “I’m going to give it to Cersei the moment I’m back there. You know what’s sad? I never unpacked my things since I left Winterfell.”

“Wait,” Says Sansa, and can’t seem to follow it with anything.

“I like this place. It’s quiet. Friendly. I’m used to the city.” Margaery smirks, already tucking her shirt back in.

“Wait,” Sansa snatches her wrist and shakes her head. “You can’t leave yet.” She nods at the door. “Employees. I can’t let them catch you - or me - like this.” Margaery laughs again at this, clear and musical. Sansa feels a stupid smile drag onto her face. _Kiss-drunk_ , she remembers Robb saying once, watching a video of Jon and his Ygritte twirling out of time with a song. _Just plain drunk_ , she’d retorted, but she knows now that he’d been right. Her heart pangs, her bones weep. She stands and forces herself not to sway as she reaches into a drawer and pulls out a half-empty glass bottle. “Drink?”

* * *

**post.**

Whiskey is for family, she’d decided a long and painful while ago. It sits in their glasses like an invitation, an immense promise of everything and forever layered over the top. Sansa swirls the liquid around, watches the amber whirlpool, rising and falling. Margaery settles into the high-backed chair behind Sansa’s desk and smiles like sharing a secret. She raises her glass and tips the liquid into her mouth. When she swallows, the walls whisper _i love you, i love you, i love you_. It may not be all the world and then some, but it is enough. Sansa raises her own glass in toast, speaking before she sips.

“So it goes.”

**Author's Note:**

> so yeah just something reasonably small, probably not my best work but hey,,, i love sansaery


End file.
